The First Emperor of China

Yan Ruisheng

1921

In the summer of 1920, Shanghai was scandalized by a sensational murder, a high-profile case and subsequent trial that was the ongoing topic of conversation in the city's numerous cafes, clubs and teahouses. Among the various reasons for its notoriety, two stand out: first, the victim was a high-class prostitute, well known in Shanghai; second, the murderer had been a mid-level manager in a respected foreign firm, a playboy who in Manhattan might have been termed a "prominent young man about town." There were detailed press reports daily as the case wound its way through the judicial system.

African Adventure: Safari in the Okavango

2007

Birdman

2015

A portrait of Robert, a troubled but poetic soul struggling with his purgatorial existence in a hackney scrapyard.

Swedish Rooms

1980

Three Swedish living rooms, under three different stages of life.

The Thinnest Line

2022

A fist-person story of the director of the documentary, who talks about the loneliness that entails living with an eating disorder and her vision now thar she is entering into adulthood.

Salvador Dalí at Work

2006

Filmmaker Jonas Mekas follows the surrealist artist around the streets of New York documenting staged public art events.

Color-Blind

2019

A synaesthetic portrait made between French Polynesia and Brittany, Color-blind follows the restless ghost of Gauguin in excavating the colonial legacy of a post-postcolonial present.

What the #$*! Do We (K)now!?

2004

Amanda is a divorced woman who makes a living as a photographer. During the Fall of the year Amanda begins to see the world in new and different ways when she begins to question her role in life, her relationships with her career and men and what it all means. As the layers to her everyday experiences fall away insertions in the story with scientists, and philosophers and religious leaders impart information directly to an off-screen interviewer about academic issues, and Amanda begins to understand the basis to the quantum world beneath. During her epiphany as she considers the Great Questions raised by the host of inserted thinkers, she slowly comprehends the various inspirations and begins to see the world in a new way.

Second Place

2012

One of several Kevin Jerome Everson pieces regarding African-American rodeo riders, SECOND PLACE brings us inside the big show. The jerkily pixilated view of a bucking bull offers an aesthetic equivalent of the cowboy's wild ride while the film's silence lends an unexpected repose to the contest. Whether anticipating a bull's blasting out of the gate or watching an old hand stretch out his back, Everson's camera is ever-attentive to the action at the edge of the frame. - Max Goldberg

High Cities of Bone

2017

Karlon, born in Pedreira dos Húngaros (a slum in the outskirts of Lisbon) and a pioneer of Cape Verdean creole rap, runs away from the housing project to which he had been relocated.

The Oceans Are the Real Continents

2019

Having Cuba as a background, decadent and in crisis, in a black-and-white lacerated by the Caraibic swinging rain, Alex and Edith, a couple in their 30s, live their love story made of small daily gestures, stories from the past, nostalgia, and a deep intimacy.

Alone

2017

This investigation into the layers of mass incarceration and its shaping of the modern black American family is seen through the eyes of a single mother in New Orleans, Louisiana.

The Tickle King

2017

Featuring new, previously unseen footage documenting the bizarre and unsettling things that happened to filmmakers David Farrier and Dylan Reeve as Tickled premiered at film festivals and theaters in 2016. Lawsuits, private investigators, disrupted screenings and surprise appearances are just part of what they encounter along the way. Amidst new threats, the duo begins to answer questions that remained once the credits rolled on Tickled, including whether the disturbing behavior they uncovered will ever come to an end.

A 3 Minute Hug

2018

As daylight breaks between the border cities of El Paso, Texas, and Juarez, Mexico, undocumented migrants and their relatives, divided by a wall, prepare to participate in an activist event. For three minutes, they’ll embrace in no man’s land for the briefest and sweetest of reunions.

Against the Law

2017

United Kingdom, March 24, 1954. Ten years before the decriminalization of homosexuality, journalist Peter Wildeblood and his friends Lord Montagu and Michael Pitt-Rivers are convicted and imprisoned for indecency and sodomy.